SOURCE: "Forster and his Merry Men," in The New York Review of Books, June 28, 1973, pp. 9-11.

In the following excerpt, Miller argues that the constrained quality of Forster's posthumous publications justifies the author's own misgivings about their literary merit.

Despite what is said about literature's power to shock, it is rare for a piece of writing to send a thrill of horror through those whose nerves are in reasonably good condition. Such a thrill, however, is administered by one of this collection of largely unknown stories by E. M. Forster: only two have hitherto appeared in print. The story is called "The Classical Annex." The prissy curator of a dull museum in a boring town with the apt name of Bigglesmouth discovers that the objects in the Classical section have come to life and been damaged. The fig leaf falls from an inferior stone statue, which develops, mirabile...